We’re Focusing On All the Wrong Things with Lindsay Clancy

After 36 hours of deliberation, the trial of Lindsay Clancy was declared a mistrial on Friday, September 4. The hung jury left seven weeks of testimony, millions of videos on social media, and three innocent lives lost seemingly all for nothing. The crime in question took place three years prior, on January 24, 2023, when 32-year-old Lindsay Clancy strangled her three children in her own home before attempting to kill herself. After Lindsay admitted her guilt, the trial centered around whether a mother in the throes of a mental health crisis—possibly postpartum psychosis—and prescribed 13 medications over three months should be held criminally responsible for her actions during that time. 

As people took to social media to discuss the case in real time, a conspiracy began to overshadow the real trial—one where Clancy’s husband, Patrick Clancy, was the real murderer. Videos with millions of views, as well as even dioramas of the crime scene, plagued phone screens across America. This theory, and social media’s obsession with it, illegitimizes what the trial represents and becomes a step back for women in the discussion of postpartum psychosis and general mental health. And while these conspiracy posters, including some self-proclaimed feminists, might think they’re supporting Lindsay by arguing for her innocence, they are instead undercutting real progress that could be made in the world of female mental health. By believing that a mother going through a mental health crisis couldn’t possibly do this—even though she admits to it—it shows that even the feminists who claim to defend women don’t understand women’s mental health, its severity, and the work we need to do to progress. 

The online conspiracy theory about Patrick’s involvement is radical and, at times, ridiculous. Some people claim that the voice Lindsay heard instructing her to kill her children was actually her husband’s. Others claim that the Patricks who walked into his two alibi locations were two entirely different people. But the running narrative that Patrick killed his children is corroborated by three main factors. For one, Lindsay’s body temperature was supposedly too low to have killed the children and jumped out of the window in the accepted time frame. Second, Patrick sent an email from his laptop while he was supposed to be running errands, and lastly, Patrick’s DNA was present on the exercise bands used as the murder weapon while Lindsay’s DNA was not. 

However, there is more to the story than these details allude to. Patrick’s relationship with his present wife began just months after the death of his three children. He often took work trips where he left his wife alone with the children; he was absent at some of her medical appointments; and he was unable to recall details of his children during trial. These details paint a different picture, one where Lindsay Clancy was a rundown, tired, and struggling mother without an appropriate support system. For many, that story is harder to believe than the one that blames Patrick. In this way, struggling women are illegitimized, and women’s mental health is overlooked because it is deemed so unbelievable. 

Choosing to believe an online conspiracy instead of the woman herself fundamentally takes away from the progress that this could have made to bring awareness to women’s mental health. Postpartum psychosis is defined as a “break from reality shortly after childbirth” and can include hallucinations, delusions, mania, and confusion. It is distinct from postpartum depression or anxiety due to its disconnect between the real and the unreal, which is why postpartum psychosis can be uniquely harmful and, in extreme cases, fatal for the mother or child. 

The trial of Lindsay Clancy undeniably had the ability to represent an important moment for women’s mental health in America, a problem that is both real and underrepresented. About one in five mothers experience a maternal mental health disorder, making it the most common complication of pregnancy and affecting 800,000 American families every year. Despite the massive scale, 75 percent of these cases go untreated. That’s due to a combination of ignorance from the mothers, who dismiss it as just a rough patch or stress, and from the doctors, who haven’t been properly educated to know what to look for or what treatment to administer. Because of that, 62 percent of mothers feel they were judged or treated unfairly for various issues postpartum, and less than 20 percent of mothers were screened for postpartum mental health issues at all. 

Instead, as a result of this conspiracy, we go back to how we were before: in disbelief that a mental health disorder could go so awry, therefore underestimating the severity of postpartum psychosis yet again. For those on social media who might not know any better, it is somehow easier to believe that someone who was never a suspect committed a crime rather than a struggling woman who was mistreated and underdiagnosed. It is clear that we need to normalize mental health crises for women, specifically postpartum, so it never even has the potential to reach the level it did here.

A mistrial means that, most likely, this case will be tried again. Clancy will go back to Tewksbury State Hospital to be held in custody. The jury, prosecutors, and defense get a second chance, but so does the public. We can retell the story and focus on the right things this time. We can’t change the three children who lost their lives. But we can make sure it doesn’t happen again. We can choose not to believe in or engage with harmful conspiracies, and focus on the specific facts of cases that we see—and how to spotlight the real, important aspects of a trial.

The public’s reaction to the Lindsay Clancy case is a symptom of a larger diagnosis: a normalization of maternal mental health struggles. Reform doesn’t just start when the Clancy case is inevitably tried again, but with normalizing and talking about postpartum mental health now. While New York does have laws requiring maternal mental health screening, there is much more to be done for people who aren’t doctors or mothers. That means learning to recognize and understand the difference between anxiety, depression, and psychosis postpartum, and pausing before believing or playing into conspiracies that are in direct opposition to accepted fact. It means reframing all of our minds so that when the next generation becomes mothers, we’re prepared to understand them.